[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

People in love, in whom every sense is open, cannot beat off the influence of a place.

But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for. . .describing a scene will be found to be very small.

To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.